Press bans and fear: How authoritarianism changes us
/The community room in a rural library slowly fills with residents on a warm September night. This is a county that has voted deep red for decades in a district continuously held by Republican congressmen since 1981. A packed meeting of over sixty attendees for the town hall of a Democratic challenger is a curiosity in this town of just over twelve thousand.
There are more gray heads than any other color and precious few under the age of forty. But the energy of the crowd is fervent, leaning forward in their seats, ready and passionate. Not all are particularly convinced by the Democrat, though no one here speaks up in favor of the Republican incumbent. At first, there seems to be no media present, until a local blogger stands up and starts snapping photos with an iPhone.
Might this upstart candidate have a chance to beat the juggernaut of a Republican who has won the district with 60 to 68 percent of the vote in three consecutive elections? Does he stand a chance with a budget of reportedly $30,000 up against roughly $1.3 million on the Republican side? The crowd seems to hope so. Their questions aren’t so much about the candidate’s policies as about strategy. How does he propose to win?
The strenuous but positive atmosphere is shattered when a harsh voice interrupts loudly from the back of the room. “Are you recording?”
I’m that lone blogger/journalist, and I’m momentarily stunned. But I manage to blurt, “No!”
The voice continues, scolding, demanding that I stop taking pictures. Given my history as a person with a visible disability, I have huge social anxiety, and it is all I can do to ask whether there is a media ban. I turn to the precarious candidate, who is frozen in mid-sentence. “Are you not allowing pictures?”
Chris beck, democratic challenger in a deep red district, talks with a crowd at a rural town hall where a member of the audience objected to photos, citing security concerns - the image shows a man talking to a room full of people with their faces censored by black rectangles - image by arie farnam
“No, n…n…no. Photos are fine.” He seems as shocked as me.
But my companion that evening taps at my leg. I can’t see the faces around me. I take photos, but that’s mainly because I’m good at composition. I’m still legally blind and the faces are all blotchy ovals without expression or distinction. I don’t know who has yelled at me or who might now be glaring. So, I sit down.
I don’t feel welcome. The general mood has soured considerably, and both questions and answers feel forced. "That was uncalled for," one woman whispers. Another comments, “She wouldn’t treat someone she respected that way." A half an hour later, I muster the courage to duck out the back door, giving a little wave in case anyone is watching for my reaction. The last thing I want to do is put more of a damper on this particular campaign.
I hoped that would be the end of it. But as it turned out, the person who scolded me was sort-of the organizer—at least the person who had helped Chris Beck set up this town hall, though he’d insisted on leading it himself, and apparently with good reason. Had there been a media ban of some kind announced? No, no one I spoke to had seen or heard anything of the sort.
Later that evening, I received a text from the organizer, demanding that I not publish any photos including her or her husband. The camera had been turned to capture the candidate plus some portions of the crowd, after all. And it hit me that this wasn’t just a controlling event coordinator with a poor understanding of free press coverage, but a person afraid for themselves and their family in a time of political repression and vindictiveness.
Was that reasonable?
Fear is rarely “reasonable.” It catches, reacts and grows like wildfire, unpredictably and usually in ways that are unhelpful. Certainly, we face significant political retribution in the U.S. today. That very weekend, reporters from CNN, Politico, and MS NOW were banned from the press areas of the White House for reporting that was mostly tepid and only sometimes rigorously fact-checked Trump’s statements. Naturally, those of us with opposition views get nervous and try to protect our identities when we can.
But this was a campaign event and a town hall where people from both sides were likely to meet, some expressly to argue with the candidate. The question about recording made a bit more sense if someone wanted to ask a sensitive question. But photos? How could being photographed in the audience of such an event be considered controversial?
Well, what if we were in Russia? In the period when a campaign event by an opposition candidate was even theoretically possible in Russia, being seen in the audience might well have been problematic, given that no one who wasn’t actively working for the regime as a spy would be there unless they were a vehement supporter of the candidate. Because that’s how Putin rolls. Surveillance would be guaranteed. Retribution might not be immediate, but the files would be kept for a time when “evidence” against you might be desirable.
I spent the next several days thinking about it, while an uncomfortable debate cropped up in our local activist discussion channel about me and my photos. Most people seemed to take the side of the organizer who had scolded me. One woman thought the camera was pointed too much toward the audience. Another speculated on how a media ban could be logistically carried out. The organizer claimed the library’s policy against photographing staff and patrons covered public events as well. A lawyer chimed in to state that it is legal to take photos at campaign events.
But that doesn’t really solve any of our problems or answer the thorny questions. Is it ethical to take such photos? Is it ethical to ban journalists or all photos at a public campaign event? Is it legitimate to be afraid of being identified in the audience, since people with opposing views do often attend town hall meetings in the U.S.? And if you think things are as bad as they are in Russia, shouldn’t we expect more discreet surveillance anyway? With Trump banning journalists, is this really something we should be emulating?
In Russia or the totalitarian states of the old Soviet Bloc, a media ban by opposition groups wouldn’t be on the table, not because their situation is (or was less dire. The opposition in Russia still faces worse repression than we do, regardless of how shocked we are at Trump’s recent actions. But in Russia, surveillance of any publicly announced event, whether an opposition campaign or a protest, would be guaranteed, whether it was visible or not. And any independent media coverage would thus be welcom, not as a means by which the authorities would grab the identities of those present but rather as documentation that is desperately needed, whether it can be used in media coverage or not.
In Trump’s America, with security cameras and smart phone location services constantly tracking us, it’s hard to imagine any advantage in banning photos that might include part of the audience at such a public event. Even local antagonism can’t be avoided. Every one of our outdoor public events is photographed by people driving or walking by. We’ve noted several photographers intentionally capturing every face in protest crowds. Some of us wear masks to try to avoid being recognized locally, because there are examples of threats and intimidation against people who oppose the MAGA movement, especially in rural areas like this.
I was trailed by a white pickup at a walking pace while I was out with my guide dog a couple of months ago. I do understand the fear.
But fear itself is also one of the greatest threats we face. All too often fear is wielded as a conscious weapon by authoritarian governments. It is meant to cause just such scenes—to turn likeminded neighbors against one another, to sow dissention and suspicion among opponents of the regime, and to ensure that efforts to oppose the regime stay quiet, unpublicized, and repressed. And it isn’t just fear that bleeds out of authoritarian regimes and into the thoughts and actions of the population.
When Trump banned major media organizations from access to the press areas of the White House, he did so in an intentionally shaming way, canceling the badges of reporters who were then dramatically refused access in front of their colleagues. Many of us share messages online about how "we are not the same." We say our opposition to this administration is not merely about political differences of opinion. It’s about things that go much deeper.
Bullying. Censorship. Banning journalists from legitimate public places. Intentional cruelty. Undermining democracy. These are not "political issues." These are moral issues. And it is not only right-wing politicians and groups that have engaged in them throughout history. Left-wing idealists with the best of intentions worked hard to build labor movements that, in some cases, developed into totalitarian regimes. I spent a lot of my journalistic career witnessing the aftermath of that in Eastern Europe.
That is why I, first and foremost, pay attention to the difference between political and ethical issues. We must guard against the creep of authoritarian thinking into our own groups. Authoritarian power. Shaming. Banning journalists from a campaign event. Those are not left or right, Democrat or Republican. That power dynamic is often spread by a regime that is so pervasive in its misbehavior that it causes citizens to mimic its tactics and turn on one another out of fear.
That is something that working as a journalist in countries with present and recent totalitarian regimes taught me. The problem isn't just the regime. Much worse is how such oppressive systems turn the people against one another, poisoning opposition groups with fear, infighting, and cynicism. This is a fascist regime that we're up against and the mutual suspicion and depression spreading in progressive groups across the country is one of the proofs of it.
We must also protect one another. Some people are more at risk than others in these times. I’ve obscured the faces in my photo to be as safe as possible, but the fact that we all had tracking devices in our pockets should banish any false sense of security. I urge everyone to learn about realistic security and privacy measures, including leaving phones at home and wearing masks. No one should be hassled if they choose to protect their own privacy.
But no one should be shamed for doing the work that needs to be done either. I was shaken by being publicly reprimanded, but I’d go through ten times that much if I thought it would help. The problem is that the change in the atmosphere of that room was palpable. No one wanted to say a peep. Some likely won't come again.
If only all the negativity just came from the regime!
It is hard to get along, to let slights go, to take personal safety measures, choose one’s own level of risk, and then be brave. But we know the alternative. As Chris Beck, the one person in the room with no hope of anonymity, said, "This is not about me. It’s bigger than any of us."
